This invention pertains to display systems and more particularly to pattern generators using binary techniques.
The pattern generators of conventional display systems using display devices such as cathode-ray tubes fall into two classes, those using vector generators and analog techniques, and those using parallel line rasters and binary modulation techniques.
Of the two classes when, characters are concerned it has been found much more convenient and simpler to use the raster scan/binary modulation schemes. These schemes fall into two major groupings, those representing the characters by dot matrices as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,165,045 and those using stroke arrays as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,305,841.
When using the dot matrices techniques one can produce characters with very intricate detail. However, the amount of information required (the number of dots) can be considerable whether the character is simple or complex. In order to compress the information required to represent a character, the stroke technique is used. Such a technique indeed does reduce the amount of information needed to represent characters such as the alphanumerics E, 3 and T but requires considerable information to represent characters such as &, %, $ and .